My first day at school :)

Marine has two hours of Latin now, so she kindly suggested that, after two hours of philosophy, she take me to the library so I could go on the computer. I understnd how she felt when she was here. Except her english is better then my french.

We left for school under cover of darkness. The sun didn't come up until we actually started classes. It's about a 10-15 minute walk from Marine's house to her school, and man is it freezing out there. Here, you don't tend to change classroms much, we've pretty much been in the same classroom all day. We had History first, the teacher asked me what history I studied and seemed very shocked when I said it wasn't compulsory. I managed to understand a few words, 'Cuba', 'communism', 'third world'. Then we went to spanish, and pretty much the only things I know about spanish come from Vertigo. So I just sang that in my head for an hour. Then we had english, which was hilarious. The teacher likes to talk very loudly, bangs his hand on the desk when he wants quiet, and speaks english with a strong american accent. They were discussing their homework, which was a bunch of questions on this extract from Barack Obama's memoirs (except the teacher kept pronouncing it barrack). Then he kept asking me questions in english. Weird questions. Like the etymology of 'keen'. And about 'the last straw', and straw, and straw hats, and hay, and hay bales, and Jesus in the manger. And how to define 'obnoxious', and other really random words. Then the word 'fellow' came up, and he, in trying to explain it, kept saying 'fellowship', and 'smeagol' and 'precious'. Most fun I've had all day. Which was good, cause afterwards we had maths, which made no sense to me whatsoever. I think derivatives might have been in there somewhere, but I don't know.

All the kids go home for lunch, so we walked back home, had some lunch, and then walked back. No wonder everyone smokes here, it's so cold. We just had two hours of philosophy, from which I could gather maybe the odd word. I heard Descartes a few times, and 'freedom', 'nature', 'rights' and 'knowledge'. I think actually going to double latin may have finished me off. They just sit there for hours on end, just taking notes while the teachers talk. And then some kid opened the window, because he was next to the heater and too hot. I better be so damn fluent by the end of this trip.
--Caitlin